Four NASA Exploration Missions To Uncover The Secrets Of The Solar System

JAKARTA - After all this time, the NASA Space Agency has finally resumed its space mission by marking four concept studies for potential robotic missions to Venus, Jupiter's moon Io, and Neptune's moon Triton.

NASA, has a number of projects that will be implemented in mid-2020. Some of them will start the exploration of planets in the solar system and moons that are on Jupiter and Neptune. This NASA exploration project will last until 2029.

According to the plan, NASA will explore Venus, Earth's twin planet with a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, sulfuric acid clouds and very hot surface temperatures of up to 880 degrees Fahrenheit or the equivalent of 471 degrees Celsius.

Indeed, since 1989, NASA has never launched a mission to Venus again. When the Magellan radar mapper departed from Earth to peer under the dense clouds of Venus and map the planet's volcanic landscape for the first time.

Furthermore, another mission approved for further study is the Io Volcano Observer or IVO, a spacecraft that will orbit Jupiter and pass near the moon Io, the most volcanically active in the solar system.

As for Neptune's Tirton lunar mission, NASA uses the Trident, a reconnaissance device that can fly in space for more detailed concept studies. Trident will follow up on observations made by NASA's Voyager 2 mission in 1989 that revealed Tirton's size is nearly the size of Earth. The moon houses geyser-like clumps that erupt from its icy surface.

"This selected mission has the potential to change our understanding of some of the world's most active and complex solar systems. Exploring one of these celestial bodies will help unlock secrets about it," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASA's Mission Directorate.

This week: 🌖 🚀 A budget for a new era of space exploration👩‍🚀 👨‍🚀 Do you have what it takes to #BeAnAstronaut? 👩‍🚀 🌎 Now home on Earth, @Astro_Christina reflects on her record-setting missionThese stories and more: https://t.co/wkBKbE8Wfj pic.twitter.com/W9QXB3rLhC

- NASA (@NASA) February 15, 2020

Later, each of these mission teams will receive approximately 3 million United States (US) dollars of funds, to conduct a study for nine months. NASA officials will also continue to review the report and select two of the four concepts for future development.

Actually this mission is limited by cost. The reason is, the proposal submitted by NASA last year has a cost limit of only 500 million US dollars, excluding launch costs and international contributions.

For more details, here are four NASA missions that have been summarized by VOI:

1. DAVINCI + (Venus Investigation for Atmospheric, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus).

The mission concept for DAVINCI +, VERITAS and Io Volcano Observer was based on a proposal submitted to NASA during the previous Discovery selection round. The Trident is a new concept made possible by NASA's decision to allow scientists to propose the use of a plutonium power plant in Discovery class investigations. The mission aims for the first time to explore the outer solar system.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will manage the mission, and Lockheed Martin will oversee assembly of the DAVINCI + spacecraft.

"DAVINCI + is on a mission for chemistry labs and orbiters to put Venus into a proper context in our solar system, so we can compare Venus, Earth and Mars. And what DAVINCI + will do scientifically is measure the chemical composition of all of them. the atmosphere from top to bottom, while imaging the surface in places where there are steep mountains which is one of the puzzles in our solar system, "said Jim Garvin, Chief Scientist of NASA.

We've selected four possible new @NASASolarSystem missions that could "transform our understanding of some of the solar system's most active and complex worlds." After evaluation, two will continue development towards flight: https://t.co/NqV7qPtlYU pic.twitter.com/wEZhwtioY7

- NASA (@NASA) February 13, 2020

2. Io Volcano Observer (IVO).

The Io Volcano Observer mission will be launched towards Jupiter, using gravity to help flybys with Earth and Mars to reach the solar system's largest planet, according to Alfred McEwen, principal investigator on the IVO mission from the University of Arizona.

"IVO, if advanced, will launch later this decade, arrive at Jupiter four or five years later, orbit Jupiter, (and) will make 10 flybys close by from the very active moon Io," said McEwen.

Io may have a magma ocean (inside). This is very important, because the ocean of magma is key to the early development of all the inner planets, including the earth and moon, and exoplanets. So they realized that studying the current magma ocean would be a great advance for living things.

With more than 400 volcanoes that can spew plumes of gas as high as 300 miles (500 kilometers) above their surface, Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system. The strong gravitational pull of nearby Jupiter melts Io's insides through tidal forces, pulling matter from one side of the moon to the other similar to the tidal effect on Earth's oceans.

3. Trident

Likewise, the Trident mission to the moon Neptune Triton will be sponsored by plutonium resources and a fast track to upgrade the spacecraft from Earth to its distant target in 12 years. Previously, this had also been done on a flyby mission that approached the New Horizons investigation, which Pluto encountered in 2015.

Assuming a launch in 2026, the Trident probe could reach Triton by 2038 for a one-shot flight and could build on the initial survey by NASA's Voyager 2 mission in 1989.

"We proposed a bold mission to Neptune's moon Triton. We wanted to explore how the ice world evolved and what processes are active in the world today," said Louise Prockter, principal investigator for Trident from the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the University Space Research Association in Houston.

4. VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy).

Finally, the Venus mission concept, dubbed VERITAS, will carry a synthetic aperture radar instrument on an orbiting spacecraft to survey planetary surfaces across nearly the entire planet.

“We are on a mission to explore a lost and inhabitable world. Venus is Earth's twin. Starting with the same size, the same composition, but developing into a very inhospitable place. We wanted to understand how these two rocky planets took different paths, "explains Suzanne Smrekar, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California who is the principal investigator on the VERITAS proposal.